Banyan

Not whaling but drowning

In a sea of international opprobrium. But a compromise may be at hand

IF YOU'RE tempted by a slab of meat gristle which surrenders little but an ooze of grease when chewed, then you'll love whale. Add to the sensory experience the accumulated mercury to be found in whale meat. Consider the suffering caused by the hunt to these intelligent mammals; and a military-industrial approach to their extermination. Japan going a-whaling is, to borrow from Oscar Wilde, the unspeakable in pursuit of the almost uneatable.

As with foxhunting in Britain, views seem irreconcilable. Since 1986 the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling. Yet every Antarctic summer, Japan sends a whaling fleet south to catch hundreds of whales for “research”. And every year at the IWC's meeting, pro- and anti-whaling camps gather in sullen deadlock. On the whaling grounds the Japanese fleet encounters the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The ocean warriors hurl rancid butter on Japanese decks, use warps to foul propellers and attempt citizen's arrests of the whaling captains. Early this year a Sea Shepherd boat sank after a collision. Now an American film has turned a spotlight on Japan's coastal hunt for cetaceans. “The Cove”, shot largely in secret, shows the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, a village on Japan's main island. This week it won an Oscar.

The slaughters have damaged Japan's standing among ordinary folk abroad. Now relations with Australia, Japan's closest friend in Asia, are at risk. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has threatened to sue Japan in the International Court of Justice if it does not give up whaling by the start of the next season, in November. In response, Japan's pro-whaling position appears only to have hardened. With veiled threats, whaling groups urge cinemas in Japan not to show “The Cove”. Two activists from Greenpeace claiming to have uncovered corruption in Japan's Antarctic whaling programme have themselves been put on trial.

When the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power last year, it had few pro-whaling instincts, unlike the Liberal Democratic Party before it. Yet it now finds itself courting international disapproval both over whales and over tuna. This week an international wildlife-protection body begins a meeting that is likely to impose a ban on trading northern Atlantic bluefin tuna. Many Japanese, it seems, would be angry if they were not allowed to eat a prized source of sushi and sashimi to extinction. Some critics extrapolate a national pathology that goes beyond conservation. Japan, they say, is turning its back on the world.

A visit to Taiji gives a slightly different perspective. It is one of Japan's more intriguing and distinctive spots. People have family names like Tomi (literally, lookout), Kaji (ironsmith) and Amino (net). Four centuries ago locals made breakthroughs in harpoon technology and the use of nets to slow down migrating whales. An old painting shows villagers at sea using ladders to scale a slaughtered right whale. Old stone monuments appease the whale spirits, but the meat sustained Taiji through famines.

As well as going after dolphins, villagers not allowed to hunt the minke whales along the coast have turned to hunting (rarer) toothed whales not covered by the IWC's moratorium. They understandably resent the IWC, which has allowed several indigenous groups to hunt whales for “subsistence” since 1986. The Makah Indians in Washington state had entirely forgotten how to hunt or handle a boat. Caribbean islanders from Bequia may go after humpbacks, yet learned whaling only in the 1870s, and that from New Englanders. Taiji's men have chased whales on Japan's coast for perhaps millennia.

The Antarctic, however, is a different kettle of fish. With industrial-scale whaling, cultural claims ring hollow. Douglas MacArthur launched Japan's modern whaling because he wanted protein for a hungry land after the second world war. These days few outside strongholds like Taiji have a taste for whale meat. The state whaling company is kept afloat with cheap loans and subsidies. Sea Shepherd, too, has an impact: the fleet is landing only half the whales it aims to catch. The 200-odd Antarctic whalers and the bureaucrats that back them are just the kind of special interest the DPJ claims to take on. But whaling constituencies swung to the DPJ in the last election. And, when Sea Shepherd is not on the scene, whaling attracts scarcely any interest among the wider population, largely ignorant of foreign disapproval. Public sentiment on whaling, for and against, is anaemic.

To have your fox and eat it

So perhaps common ground might be found after all. Last year a former foreign-ministry spokesman, Tomohiko Taniguchi, broke ranks. Japan should think about giving up Antarctic “research”, he said, in return for a limited resumption of commercial coastal whaling. As well as the damage to Japan's international standing, he also pointed out that meat from Antarctic whaling spoilt the market for Japan's handful of local whalers. The deadlocked IWC may be groping towards a similar solution. A proposal named after its head, Cristián Maquieira, aims for a big cut in catches in return for limited commercial whaling by those already taking whales, while bringing “research” whaling under IWC control. Japan appears interested, though details will become clearer only with the IWC's annual meeting this summer.

Conservationists would rail against any resumption of commercial whaling. So would Australia. But the motives for Mr Rudd's whale-protection fervour are not wholly pure. Australia has territorial claims on Antarctica and adjacent seas. Meanwhile, Mr Rudd hopes his zeal will draw urban voters away from the Greens in the next general election, which will helpfully fall before the November deadline. Even so, a deal would be far better than continued stand-off. Whale meat would remain uneatable, but the pursuit of it would be a little more speakable.